The best present you ever received

[Frankie Crisp]

Yours?

[FLips]

[DEF]

My next door neighbour was my best mate as a kid. He was a year older and for some reason sooner or later would pretty much break all my toys. I was a huge transformers fan and loved them all. My folks didn't have tons of money back then so I didn't get them often unless they were second hand or something. Basically birthdays and Christmas. Much like every kid born in 83 Optimus Prime was my hero and I loved that truck. Just after Prime was killed in Transformers The Movie they discontinued the original toy. Sure as shit my neighbour broke my Prime and my 6ish (can't be sure of dates) year old heart broke. That year my parents pulled off a Christmas miracle and found the very last Optimus Prime in any store they looked in. My Neighbour broke many more of my toys but I've still got Prime.

Also Santa fucked over my little brother one year by co-gifting the two of us Scorponok. He wasn't the action figure type. That shit was/is mine.

Back when I was in my last year of uni and skint as fuck my now wife came home one day out of nowhere with a brand new Xbox and Spiderman. She isn't the slightest bit interested in gaming but saw how much fun I had at mates houses with it and with one of her first pay cheques as a teacher bought me it.

At my previous job they got me a hand signed Batman print by Norm Breyfogle. I loved working with them but even still it really struck me that they went out of their way to get something that I would absolutely love.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

My mini museum. I'm a proper nerd for this sort of stuff and the other half got it me for Christmas a few years back.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

Little over 2 years ago I made a temporary switch in hours from weekends to working early mornings through the week in my job, as a good luck present my best friend and our supervisor clubbed together to buy me 2 POP figures of Deathstroke and Black Canary from Arrow

For Christmas the same year my mum made me an Ebay crate, as I was always buying envelopes and stuff when selling stuff on there, filled with rolls of sellotape, parcel tape, labels, envelopes, Sharpie pens, ball pens, note pads, scissors and custom printed return stickers 

[Gus Mears]

I feel like a right saddo saying the following and not the PS1 I got in the late 90's, but here goes.

My other half made me this amazing scrapbook of the first year of our relationship for Christmas. It was full of pictures, drawings, old train ticket stubs and receipts of places we had been that she had kept quietly over the previous months and comments she had spent ages writing in fancy text to tie the narrative of it together.

So much effort went into it and I wasn't expecting it at all. My eyes were full Ric Flair after reading through it on Christmas Day. If the house was on fire, it would be the thing I saved

[Joe Blog]

Anal

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, Joe Blog said:

Anal

Anal or doggy-doggy?

[hallicks]

As you'll find out when Freespace makes a surprise lunge into the top 5 games of all time, my nan bought me a brand new PC in '99. It was my first proper computer and it was the better than all my friends machines (for about a month) with a cool 450MHz processor. Also got a 17" monitor, printer and scanner. Cost north of £2k and it was pretty much my inheritance coming early. It was everything I'd ever wanted up to that point and lasted years and years. Cheers nan! 

[Undefeated Steak]

For the amount of sheer enjoyment I got from it, maybe a copy of Smackdown 2 on the PS1. I can't think of any other present that I got so much fun from. Added to that, it was really the thing that introduced me to the WWF and wrestling as a whole.

More recently, I got given a notebook made from an original 1950's map of an area I love. One of those presents that doesn't sound much but has a lot of meaning behind it for me. 

The person who gave me Smackdown would've never known how much of an impact that would go onto make. It was essentially just another PS game but one that would introduce me to a lifelong hobby.

It makes you wonder whether you've ever influenced somebody's life so much with a simple gesture that you'd have no idea about. 

[Rey_Piste]

3 hours ago, Joe Blog said:

Anal

So what you're saying is that you love receiving anal. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[I Bent My Wookie]

Two come to mind, both for just pure lovely reasons. 

First one was at my graduation from University when a girl I met on her first day (I'd already restarted from my previous first year) had got me an engraved in wood medal with my degree classification, name and a bit about how strong I was throughout on it. Having had some of the worst time during uni with my mental health having someone recognise how strong I had to be to complete it genuinely made me cry before I'd even got up to the podium to a large portion of the room whooping from people I knew through societies and those that had graduated and managed to get into the ceremony seeing me finally get out alive. 

Second was the first time I had a proper house party for my birthday (New Years) and despite telling my friends that I just wanted people to celebrate my birthday rather than new year and didn't need any presents they decided to pretend they thought it was just a NYE party.

At midnight, they rolled out a birthday cake shaped like the Sesame Street sign with Jolly and my age in the sign parts, a ton of birthday banners, party hats, a Oscar the Grouch card and all that. I'd just done an entire topic on the language in Sesame Street used for children and had got really interested in educational TV production so the fact they actually were listening when I seemingly was losing my mind doing my A Levels made me feel on top of the world. 

It's the small things really. 

Edited July 6, 2019 by Shy Dad

[Otto Dem Wanz]

The Playstation and copy of Tekken 2 I got at Christmas 1997 and it’s not even close. I’m seriously thinking of getting a Yoshimitsu tattoo in his Tekken 2 gear which probably does a good job of explaining how much I love that game and series. So many happy memories. 

[Ronnie]

Although we barely speak (we're not in conflict, just really antisocial), we had a conversation once about places we'd always wanted to go to. Mine involved log cabins, snow, pines and so forth, the tundra, something like the area straddling the USA and Canada. I couldn't think how to articulate it so said Lapland, which was a neat way of summarising the image I had in a single word. That Christmas Day, I opened series of presents, which started out as weird contraptions such as spiky boot grips so you don't slip over on hard snow. Two days later, I was boarding an aeroplane en route to Lapland.

[RedRooster]

An Amiga.

I actually wanted a Sega Megadrive like all of my friends had. But my fucking parents wanted to get me something educational.

Joke was on them though as I only ever played games on it. 

And had I not got an Amiga I’d never have experienced games like Monkey Island, Cruise for a Corpse, Pushover, Xenon and The Chaos Engine.

Heck, I probably wouldn’t have played games like Cannon Fodder, Another World or Wiz N Liz either, I’d have been too busy with Sonic The Hedgehog. 

Amiga games were so cheap that I was able to build a diverse library of outstanding games, it was great. 

My parents got their own back the year after though by convincing me that I wanted Santa to get me a printer for Christmas, something that was only ever used by them. Boooo.